Tafsir Corpus Map
Fourteen centuries of Quranic commentary, visualized. Explore which ayat have received the most attention across 22 mufassirun.
What you are looking at
Every row below is a surah, in order, from al-Fatihah at the top to an-Nas at the bottom. Every cell within a row is a single ayah of that surah. The color of each cell shows how much commentary that specific ayah has received across the mufassirun in the ParallelQuran corpus.
Why this matters
Tafsir is not evenly distributed across the Quran. Some ayat have drawn commentary from every major scholar for fourteen centuries; others are explained briefly and moved past. This map makes that pattern visible at a glance. It is a starting point for asking: which ayat have the community treated as load-bearing? Which deserve a closer second look? Where do the famous works of Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, al-Qurtubi, al-Razi and their peers all converge?
Things to notice
- Al-Fatihah (row 1) is short but consistently dark — every mufassir comments on every one of its seven ayat.
- Al-Baqarah (row 2) is the longest surah and one of the most heavily commented. Look for the bright spike around ayah 255 — Ayat al-Kursi, the Throne Verse.
- An-Nur 24:35 — the Light Verse — tends to glow against the surahs around it.
- The dense, dark patch in the final juz (rows 78 to 114, the short surahs) reflects how often early-Meccan ayat are taught and memorized; commentary follows attention.
- Switch the toggle to "Total wordcount per ayah" to see length of commentary rather than count of commentators. The two views often disagree, and that disagreement is itself informative.
Hover any cell for details. Click any cell to open that ayah in Mushaf View, where five mufassirun appear around the verse.
Top 25 most-commented ayat
Each row is a surah (1 to 114, top to bottom). Each cell within a row is one ayah. Darker cells received heavier commentary.
What you are looking at
A circular map of the whole tafsir corpus. The inner ring is the mufassirun themselves, with each slice sized by the total length of that scholar's commentary. The outer ring breaks each scholar down by surah, showing where they wrote the most.
Why this matters
Not every tafsir is the same size. A multi-volume work like Tafsir al-Tabari is an order of magnitude larger than al-Jalalayn, and the structure of each scholar's attention differs. This view makes those differences legible: at one glance you can compare the scale of the classical and modern works in our corpus, and see which surahs each scholar prioritized.
How to read it
- The bigger an inner-ring slice, the longer that scholar's total commentary across the whole Quran.
- Click any inner-ring slice to focus on one mufassir; the side panel lists their per-surah breakdown.
- Click any outer-ring surah segment to jump directly to that surah in Mushaf View.
- Click the back button to return to the all-mufassirun overview.
Inner ring: mufassirun, sized by total commentary length. Outer ring: each mufassir broken down by surah. Click a slice to focus; click the center to reset.